


After-Death Cuddles

by kmfillz



Category: Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: M/M, Nightmares, Pining, Post-Here Lies the Abyss, Requited Love, Scurrilous Rumors Involving Dragons, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-22
Updated: 2017-11-22
Packaged: 2019-02-05 07:48:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12790023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kmfillz/pseuds/kmfillz
Summary: Hawke has an easier time escaping the Fade than Varric has pretending everything is normal afterward.(An exchange gift written forBlack Emporium 2017.)





	After-Death Cuddles

**Author's Note:**

  * For [friendlywitch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/friendlywitch/gifts).



> Apologies for the delay!
> 
> (Would you believe me if I said I got lost in the Fade?)

"He was a hero," the Inquisitor tells Varric, and just like that, Hawke's existence slips into the past tense. Hawke _was_.

The Inquisitor gently pulls away from the hug, because she is the Inquisitor and there are a dozen people clamoring for her attention every minute of the day. Varric is left standing there, staring at the place where Hawke _was_. A Warden takes pity on him and guides him inside the keep, to a room untouched by the fighting, warmed by a fireplace, with a writing desk. Varric takes a seat in front of it, but doesn't take out a sheet of paper, doesn't open the ink or pick up a pen. He's composing in his head. First Hawke's epitaph, then the letters. Hours pass in a kind of a daze as he sits and writes. That's why he isn't present when it happens.

Afterward, Varric will describe the scene like this, because you can't skip the most dramatic event of your story:

_The scorched spot on the flagstones where the rift closed hours before glimmers suddenly, reflecting the startling green crack splitting the air above it. The crack pulses like it's fighting its way open, and then the courtyard is abruptly lit with a radiance like the moon emerging from behind a cloud, and Hawke strides out._

In reality, by the time Varric gets there, not sure what the urgent need for him is, not daring to hope, the Inquisitor has already closed the rift, and Hawke is already in a heap on the ground, being tended to by an Inquisition healer. Finally, Varric dares to hope.

* * *

To Hawke, the world around him was a weary blur, punctuated only by the healer's soothing touch. When the healer's magic had finished stopping blood leaking from his vital organs, the healer stepped out of the way, and a heavy shape thumped down on a pair of thick, solid knees in front of him. Varric pulled Hawke forward into a tight hug, the likes of which he'd never given him before. "You're alive," Varric croaked. His stubbled jaw brushed across Hawke's neck when he spoke. On their knees, the difference in height between them was diminished, but Hawke still had a height advantage. He liked having Varric nestling into him like this, Varric's face against his neck, Varric's skin touching his.

"Disappointed I'm not dead?" he murmured.

"Fuck you, Champion," Varric whispered harshly.

The unfamiliar anger in Varric's voice startled Hawke. Only when he felt tears on his neck did it hit him: Varric had thought he was dead. The possibility of his own demise hadn't even occurred to Hawke. For him, the recent events were just another near-death experience. He'd had enough of those that he knew how to face them. You did what you came to do, then you kept going, period. The question you faced was not whether you would survive, but how. Consider the possibilities: you were right, and lived to gloat about it to your friends, or you died, and no one found out what foolhardy notions you'd been entertaining in your final moments. Hawke had cleared the way through Nightmare's realm for his friends to escape, and they had escaped. That knowledge buoyed him. From then on, the Nightmare's mocking words had no more impact than a light morning mist that evaporates with the sun. The Nightmare's claws, yes, those had had a bit more impact. But not enough to keep Hawke from ultimately evading its clutches. He'd found a hole in the Fade, as uncanny-looking on the far side of the Veil as they looked in this world, and channeled all of his magic into it, hoping the Inquisitor would be able to sense it somehow. Survival hadn't left him with enough spare time to despair.

Varric, on the other hand...

"Do you have any idea how hard it is to come up with an epitaph that adequately sums up your life?" The storyteller's voice shook with emotion, betraying the fact that it was only half a joke.

Hawke swallowed down hysterical laughter and gave the side of Varric's head a crooked grin. "Hmm, how about: 'A bright young Fereldan named Hawke / Had a short friend who loved so to talk–'"

The arms encircling Hawke tightened. "Has."

"Has?" He pulled back, not enough to break free of Varric's arms—Maker forbid—but enough to afford himself room to breathe. Varric's red-rimmed eyes pinned Hawke to the spot, and Hawke had trouble breathing for a new reason.

"You're not dead. You don't need an epitaph." The emotion in Varric's face was too raw. Hawke averted his eyes, embarrassed to have seen something so private.

"Everyone needs an epitaph eventually."

"You don't," Varric growled. "Not today."

Hawke bit his tongue now. He'd always been terrible at keeping smart comments from coming out. Varric had never minded before. He held Varric silently, the two of them making an island of warmth in the evening air. Even so, the wind cut through Hawke's armor like enormous chitinous claws surrounding him and _at least the others made it out–_

Cold stinging in Hawke's eyes broke him out of the memory. There was no wind in the Fade. There wasn't anything cold in the Fade. The Fade didn't _feel_ the way the world here _felt._ The Fade was no more warm or cold or rough or smooth than a thought was, and the only thing with any smell there was yourself. Hawke buried his nose in Varric's hair and breathed his friend's scent in. Warm, familiar, it excited something in the pit of his gut he'd long ago learned to kept quiet. He tried to quiet it now. They were in the middle of a public courtyard, and besides, this was Varric. Regardless of location, the dwarf wasn't interested in human men, however badly he might feel about their presumed death.

Seeker Cassandra arrived on the scene wearing a face that couldn't seem to settle on one expression, and as a result looked somewhat deranged. There was a smile somewhere in that medley, that much Hawke could tell, and when Cassandra spoke, there was nothing but exultation in her voice: "Champion! You're alive!"

"So I've heard." He belatedly remembered his resolution to be a little less flippant and added, "I'm glad to be back, Seeker."

"Are you well?"

Hawke's laughter caught on the lump in his throat. "Made it back to the mortal world with all my major organs, I'm happy to say. I'll be fine."

Cassandra hesitated, then came out with it: "And the Nightmare? Is it dead?"

The courtyard closed in on Hawke. He staggered under the dizzying weight of a malevolent regard too vast to comprehend. It wasn't clear which way was down—were there directions here? gravity? He scrabbled with his hands for purchase on something to stabilize him.

Varric's outraged voice echoed distantly in his ears as if from far away: "You can't even wait for him to get back on his feet before you interrogate him?"

Someone's hand cradled the back of Hawke's head. Gradually the world re-crystallized. He was in Adamant Fortress, kneeling in a courtyard, with Varric staring concernedly into his face from inches away. "Hawke, can you hear me?"

"Yes," Hawke said, sounding weaker than he liked. He took a deep breath and at last released Varric to rise cautiously to his feet. "I'm alright now. Just a bit disoriented. Not even mages were meant to spend that long bodily in the Fade. I keep expecting reality to..."

"Let's get you inside." Varric pulled Hawke's arm over his shoulders and supported him as they crossed the courtyard, but it was unnecessary. Hawke was steadier now. He only needed to remember he could think things here without making them real, and that what was real couldn't be changed by wistful thoughts.

Inside the keep there was a couch in front of a fire. The heat from the fireplace felt good. Feeling anything at all was good. Varric sat beside him, one arm still wrapped supportively around Hawke's waist. Cassandra flanked Hawke on the other side.

"What can you tell us of what happened?" The Seeker's eyes darted to Varric and back. Worried he was going to yell at her again? Hawke was tickled by Varric's protective streak. No, 'tickled' wasn't the right word. It thrilled him. 

He leaned ever so slightly into Varric's warmth and looked Cassandra in the eye. "I fought the Nightmare. I escaped. I got the Inquisitor's attention through a rift—it's lucky she hadn't closed them all yet—and she got me out. Anything else I can help you with?"

"Does the Nightmare still live?"

Hawke closed his eyes and saw those eyes looking back into him, thousands of them, but they weren't real, not here. It was only a memory. He opened his eyes and shook his head. "I wounded it, but I don't think it's dead."

Cassandra sighed. "Ah, I'd hoped... but I am glad you returned to us. We need you in the Inquisition."

Hawke raised his eyebrows, and they remained raised after Cassandra had risen from the couch and left. "Did I just get recruited into the Inquisition without being asked?" he asked Varric incredulously. He shifted on the couch to face his friend, relinquishing what he could secretly admit to himself had been a cuddle.

"Sounded like it to me. Don't feel bad; it happens to the best of us." Varric smiled at Hawke, a twinkle in his eyes. Hawke smiled back, grateful that Varric seemed to be himself again.

"You mean me, of course," he teased.

"I mean you," agreed Varric, deadly serious. His mask of jocularity fell away, and Hawke could see the grief lingering in his eyes.

Hawke swallowed, unsure of what to say.

Varric stuck close to Hawke's side the rest of that long day. Hawke discovered that while he had spent only a few hours alone in the Fade (although he would as easily have believed if they'd told him it had been minutes or days), those few hours had been enough time for half of Adamant to write him off as dead. As the evening wound on, a crowd formed around Hawke, Grey Wardens and Inquisition soldiers jostling each other to wish him well and laugh at his jokes.

After the last few years as a fugitive, it was nice to feel wanted. Everyone here smiled at him, some with awe, some with fondness. Hawke basked in it, until exhaustion overtook him, and he broke away from the adoring throng to retire for the night and put an end to the weirdest day he'd had since he'd left Kirkwall.

Varric left Hawke at the door of the infirmary reluctantly. The healers insisted Hawke spend the night there, within shouting distance of them, in case any of his wounds reopened.

Hawke slipped quickly into sleep.

* * *

He was in the Kirkwall, but it was not the Kirkwall he knew. The streets were empty, the shops were empty, the houses were... The houses weren't empty. There were shapes moving in the windows, silhouetted by the flames, as roofs collapsed and the city was consumed in fire. The fire was his doing; he'd smiled as he lit the first blaze. But now people were dying, trapped inside their homes. Panic washed over him. In a guilty frenzy he dove for the nearest window. He had to save as many as he could. The shutters disintegrated into charcoal at his touch. He vaulted over the sill, reaching out to the shapes in the burning room. They reached back, hungrily. _At last,_ they whispered—

Someone was shaking him awake, and it wasn't a healer. "Hawke, it's a dream."

It was Varric, sitting on the edge of his bed. Candle light flickered over the dark circles under his eyes.

"What are you doing here? Why aren't you asleep?" Hawke sat up blearily. What time was it?

"I have to be here," Varric said in the low voice of someone confessing something painful. "I left you for dead today. If I leave you again..."

"...We'll both get a good night's sleep?" Hawke felt too exhausted for this conversation.

"Yeah, you looked really restful when I came in."

Hawke flopped backward onto the pillow, defeated by the truth. "It's only nightmares, Varric." The words sounded idiotic as soon as he said them.

"Isn't that what nearly killed you earlier?" Varric pointed out, redundantly. The _Fuck you, Champion_ edge was back on his voice, and it hurt Hawke too much to hear. He wrote the argument off as pointless.

"Stay, then," he said softly, "if it makes you feel better. You can be on nightmare watch."

"Your wish is my command," Varric lied, with a flourish.

Hawke snorted as he shut his eyes. He could hear Varric dragging a chair over to the bedside. If Varric wanted to spend the night staring at him through the gloom like a hungry owl, it was no skin off his nose.

The following day, Varric complained repeatedly of the crick in his neck and the stiffness of his back.

"You have only yourself to blame," Hawke told him, resolved to be unsympathetic, despite a faint pang of guilt. He'd slept soundly and dreamlessly after the terrible nightmare Varric had woken him from, and when he'd asked the healers in residence if he'd screamed much in the night, they looked confused and shook their heads.

Come bedtime, Hawke was halfway through regaling Varric with scandalous gossip about the commander of the outpost in the Western Approach when it hit him that over the past hour Varric had maneuvered them both into Hawke's quarters and settled himself into the arm chair facing the bed. Hawke's story trailed off, forgotten, as he narrowed his eyes at the sneaky dwarf.

"Something the matter?" asked Varric, innocent as a mabari in a cheese closet.

"Funny thing about the Fade..." Hawke pulled off his boots, surpressing a yawn. "If you think a thing, it's as good as real."

Varric leaned forward, concern warring in his expression with eagerness for a story.

"If, say, you thought a chair was a bed," Hawke continued, "it would be a bed."

Varric caught on to where this was heading, and glared back at him.

"Whereas on this side of the Veil, a chair remains a chair, no matter how hard you pretend it's something else. Go to bed, Varric."

Varric went, muttering disgruntledly to himself. Hawke fell asleep with the comfort of knowing Varric was sleeping in a proper bed.

He heard no complaints from Varric the next day. Varric was, if anything, curiously subdued. He looked wrung out when Hawke saw him at breakfast, but said nothing about it. At lunch Hawke caught him nearly falling asleep into the soup.

"Trouble sleeping?" Hawke asked.

"The beds in this place are terrible." From the way he avoided Hawke's eyes, Hawke doubted the bed was the real problem.

 _Shit._ Hawke sighed. "You know, if you prefer sleeping armchairs, there's one in my quarters that's currently unoccupied."

Varric met his gaze in surprise. The confusion in the dwarf's face was testament to his exhaustion; Varric always caught Hawke's drift.

"You're welcome to sleep there," Hawke said plainly, then shrugged. "Or you can sleep in your soup."

Varric was sheepish. "Good point; the soup doesn't deserve that. It's not half bad for western food. Reminds me of the roast deepstalker we had that one time."

Hawke shuddered at the thought, but fearlessly drank down the last of the broth. They'd eaten that deepstalker out of desperation in the Deep Roads, and they'd swiftly regretted it afterward. If darkspawn had caught up to them in the stinking aftermath, they wouldn't have been alive and sitting here now, joking about the local cuisine. "You should get Corff to add deepstalkers to his repertoir."

"His mystery stew already has enough mysteries in it, thanks."

That evening Varric didn't bother with the dissimulation of the night before. He followed Hawke to his room, kicked off his boots, and settled back in the chair. Hawke tossed him one of the blankets, stripped down to his breeches, climbed into bed and went to sleep.

* * *

Trying to extract Bethany safely from between the sleeping ogre's jaws was no simple task, and Varric's yelling wasn't helping. He kept repeating, _It's not safe. Leave her!_ Hawke shushed him angrily. Hawke had to save his sister, and the ogre could wake up at any moment. Bethany wasn't being any more helpful. Her panicked flailing made her difficult to keep hold of. She kept slipping through his fingers and back down into the creature's maw. He begged her to stay still, but she didn't seem to notice. Only when he pulled her free at last did he realize that Varric's warnings had never been about the ogre. Bethany had the idol in her hands, and she screamed an inhuman scream as she summoned a statue to rip Varric in half, guts dripping out of the hole in his torso.

Hawke sat up with a hoarse cry. Before he got his bearings, warm arms surrounded him, steadying him. He shook in Varric's grasp, heart still pounding as the nightmare receded. When his breathing had returned to normal, Varric sat back, to equal amounts disappointment and relief on Hawke's part.

Mortified, Hawke rubbed his face with his hands, glad that the darkness hid... whatever it was he was hiding. His injured dignity, maybe. "I think the Nightmare has a grudge against me." The sound of his own voice was barely recognizable. It creaked like a tree after an ice storm.

Varric's familiar rasp, in comparison, was full of warmth and life, and it symbolized everything right with the world. "Wouldn't you hold a grudge if someone burnt off seven of your limbs?"

"You were counting?"

"Nah, I just made the number up."

Hawke laughed happily. "It was more than seven," he decided.

"Seventeen it is. You alright now?"

"Yes. Thank you, Varric."

"My pleasure." 

For a moment they sat there in silence. Hawke tugged at his beard, wishing he knew how to put what he was feeling into words. _Thank you_ was a laughable understatement, a drop in the sea of emotions churning inside him.

The bed dipped, signalling Varric's departure, and Hawke opened his mouth, emotions crystallizing into the shape of the word _Stay._ Before the word could break loose from his throat, a strangled cry rang out in the darkness, and Varric's bulk slammed back down onto the mattress beside Hawke's thigh.

"Varric?!" he yelped, heart resuming its hammering from earlier. How could the statue have gotten to him? Dreams weren't real here! Hawke flailed blindly for Varric's solid form and found Varric's shoulder, large muscles clenched under the thin, heavily embroidered fabric. Hawke grabbed on. Varric made no move to shrug him off.

"That nuglicking armchair of yours," Varric gritted out, "is going to kill me."

Hawke winced in sympathy, but his panic abated. "Careful–" he whispered uselessly when Varric leaned forward in a second attempt to stand.

Within seconds, Varric was once more bent over on the edge of the bed, hissing in pain.

"Don't rush it." Hawke sat up and slid forward to rest a hand ever-so-lightly on the center of Varric's wrenched back. "In fact, better yet, don't get up at all."

"I don't want to take your bed." The words sprang hurriedly from Varric's mouth, and his voice sounded higher than usual. The ambiguity of the phrasing set Hawke on edge. Did Varric think Hawke was coming on to him at a time like this? No, Varric had to know him better than that. If Varric sounded uncomfortable, it was because the man was in acute pain.

He dismissed his irrational fears, and kept his voice even. "Good, because you won't. This bed is big enough for two, and I refuse to watch a friend of mine be crippled by an inanimate piece of furniture."

Varric sniffed. "You're right. That would be embarrassing for you."

"And what's the point of embarrassing me if my trusty biographer isn't there to record my embarrassment for all to read?" Hawke backed away to the far side of the bed to make room. "Don't worry. You can't be as annoying a bedmate as Carver was during the year we lived at Uncle Gamlen's."

The bed creaked and shifted and the blankets rustled as Varric gingerly lay down. Hawke continued talking to cover up the small grunts of pain coming from the darkness to his left. "Before that, in Lothering, I bunked with both the twins, but our bed there was larger than Gamlen's miserable cots. Carver kicked me more in that one year in Lowtown than he or Bethany had in the entire decade before."

He almost jumped when Varric's voice came from a handsbreath away. "Shit, if I'd know you were that hard up for lodging, I could have found you something at the Hanged Man."

It was for the best that Varric had no clue what kind of picture those words conjured in Hawke's mind. At least, Hawke was reasonably sure Varric didn't. His stubbly friend could be dangerously perceptive, but Hawke had put heroic effort into suppressing his futile crush for going on ten years. Walking in the Fade had thrown Hawke a little off balance; that was all. That's why he was lying here wishing Varric were somewhere else so Hawke could privately indulge in the fantasy of knocking on the door to the suite at the Hanged Man and being offered Varric's bed and Varric's body.

Hawke pinched himself, hard.

"Comfortable now?" he asked his strictly platonic bedmate.

"Yeah. I can't guarantee I'll be able to get up in the morning, but for now, I'm fine." A heavy sigh. "Thanks, Hawke."

"No trouble at all." 

"What I mean is... I owe you for putting up with my bullshit the past couple days."

Hawke frowned. "I always put up with your bullshit. It's the curse of being your best friend."

Varric's words were barely more than a hoarse whisper: "You deserve better."

"Speaking of bullshit..." Hawke was suddenly very awake and alarmed. "What's gotten into you lately? You've been off since we got back from the Fade."

"Since _I_ got back from the Fade. Since we left you there, alone."

"I was only alone in the Fade a few hours." (Or weeks, or months.) "Why did that rattle you so badly? We've been separated in battle before."

Harsh breathing echoed off the bare stone walls. "The moment the breach closed behind us, as far as anyone knew, _you were dead_. I even started a letter to Carver to let him know what had happened. How I'd left you to die. I should have been the one to stay behind. I didn't even volunteer."

A chill ran through Hawke. If Varric had stayed, he wouldn't have been able to get the Inquisitor's attention the way Hawke had. Varric would have died there. "Do you honestly think I would stand by and let you do something so stupid?" he hissed.

"It wasn't your choice."

"Sod the Inquisitor! I only follow her orders because you trust her judgment. If she had ordered you to remain behind in the Fade when she had a perfectly good mage right there, that would be piss poor judgment, and I wouldn't have allowed it."

"I didn't mean the Inquisitor," Varric growled.

"It would have been equally poor judgment on your part. No matter whose decision it was, there is nothing that would make me leave you in the Fade by yourself."

"I wish I could make the same promise, but we both know better than that." The misery in his voice hit Hawke like a brick. Hawke lay there stunned, trying to come up with words for his objections. In the end, he reached across the small space between them to squeeze Varric's shoulder.

"Stop trying to ruin my heroic sacrifices, alright?"

Varric laid his large hand atop Hawke's. The calluses on his palms brushed the tops of Hawke's knuckles. "Has it ever occurred to you that you deserve friends as heroic as you are? Not cowards, thieves, and madmen."

It was the worst idea Hawke had heard in his life. "Can you picture me, surrounded by Sebastians? I don't want role models; I want–" Varric's hand tightened around Hawke's before he could pull away. "Varric, I trust you with my life. You've never failed me. You didn't fail me two days ago."

A memory rose in his mind, echoing his words: _You failed them, and they died knowing it._ Hawke kicked himself. If the Nightmare had tried to get to him... "What did the Nightmare tell you?"

"Oh, just ranting and raving. What did it tell you?"

He licked his lips and tried for an equally light tone. "What didn't it tell me? To someone with a fear of incessant blather, it would have been terrifying. It told me I had failed Kirkwall. It told me you and the others hadn't made it out. It told me Carver hated me, Merrill was possessed, Aveline..." He choked. "It told me another Blight was beginning. And you're distracting me."

"It told you that?"

"Yes, right after it told me where I'd put that halla statuette I found in Darktown that I was going to give to Merrill. Demons are just full of helpful tips like that."

Varric's laughter rumbled through his chest, creating a pleasant vibration under Hawke's fingertips. Hawke pressed his captive hand flat against Varric's chest to feel it more clearly.

"It wasn't anything the Nightmare said. Demons are so much hot air."

Air and malice and a hundred clacking claws. "Then what was it?"

"Writing about your death."

He could hear the grief in Varric's voice. Hawke's heart fluttered uncomfortably in his ribcage. "You've never had trouble writing about me before, comedy or tragedy."

"Oh, writing about you is easy. Someone could write a whole book about you without even trying."

"A best-seller, even."

"Well, that depends on the skill of the writer in question."

"Naturally."

"Hawke, writing about you is a pleasure and an honor, not to mention a livelihood. Writing those letters, though, I realized that I've been so busy telling the world about you that I haven't told you as much as I should've. There was so much I had to say to you, but I couldn't exactly write _you_ a letter."

"Not unless you could find a messenger willing to deliver to the Fade."

Silence from Varric. Hawke wondered if the dwarf realized he was stroking the back of Hawke's hand. Hawke had no intention of saying anything about it. He was under no illusions that Varric's actions meant the things he desperately wanted them to mean, but he treasured them nonetheless.

After a while, Varric's movements stilled and his breathing settled into a steady pattern. His chest rose and fell under Hawke's palm, which was still pressed under Varric's hand. He could have gotten his hand away without waking Varric, he was reasonably sure, but he chose not to.

"Sweet dreams," he whispered to his sleeping bedmate.

* * *

"Morning, Hawke," sang a voice not far from Hawke's ear.

"Rmph?" Hawke's groan was muffled the layer of warm fabric supporting his head. A hand patted his back companionably, its owner apparently satisfied with his response.

As Hawke came gradually awake, he became aware of the compromising position he was in. The fabric under his cheek was covering the thick muscles of Varric's shoulder. His right knee was hooked around Varric's ankle. The hand on his back was connected to Varric by the arm currently pinned under Hawke. When Hawke twitched in surprise, his fingers brushed the bare skin of the dwarf's belly, where Varric's shirt had ridden up in the night.

For his part, Varric seemed completely unconcerned by their physical entanglement. He was awake and reading a book in the early morning sunshine.

Hawke raised his head blearily to look around. "If this keeps up, people are going to talk."

"Oh, they already do," said Varric absently, reaching over him to turn a page in his book.

Hawke blinked and pulled back enough to glare suspiciously at Varric without disentangling himself.

Varric looked up, his expression innocence itself. "What? Oh, you think I'm the one spreading scurrilous rumors about you?"

Seeing his eyes crinkle from this close did things to Hawke. "I _know_ you're spreading scurrilous rumors about me."

Varric shrugged amiably. "Somebody has to. The material is too good."

"Why me? I thought the Inquisitor was your favorite subject matter these days. Shouldn't it be her reputation you're sullying with dirty stories?"

Varric put down the book and shifted slightly to face Hawke. Somehow this maneuver left them more tightly intertwined than before, not less.

"The Inquisitor is topical. Right now, everyone wants to know about the Herald of Andraste, savior of Thedas. But you, Hawke? You're a hero of the people. Dirty stories about you have staying power."

"I'm glad to hear it," Hawke said, and surprised himself by meaning it. He was more jealous of Varric's attentions than he liked to admit. Then again, the Inquisitor wasn't waking up with Varric wrapped around her. "So, which of the rumors making the rounds are your doing?"

"Which ones have you heard?"

Hawke raised his eyebrows. Just how many had Varric spread? "Dragons," he said succinctly.

Varric laughed, and Hawke had to look away. He loved being this close to Varric—and how little Varric seemed to mind their closeness—but it came with risks. Being this close made Hawke want more, made him want things he knew were off the table. He lay his head back down on Varric's shoulder. He could have this. He should be content.

"Everyone already knows you love dragons," Varric was saying. "I just added some details to spice it up."

"Love?!" Hawke spluttered. "I _kill_ dragons."

" _Love_ to kill."

"Love to _see dead_."

"Hey, I had to change a few details around. Necrophilia is less popular than you might think."

"Bestiality, however, is all the rage?" Hawke wasn't really angry. The stories Varric spread about him were often embarrassing, but never truly hurtful.

"Come on, nobody is going to look at you with less respect if they think you've ridden high dragon dong."

"That's the other thing! High dragons are all female. Why am I the one taking it up the arse in that story? It makes no sense!"

"Trust me, most of Thedas knows less than you about dragon anatomy."

"Or dragon mating practices, according to the rumor you've been spreading." Hawke sighed heavily. "And the rumors about me and you?"

Varric froze under him. Hawke was treading on thin ice here. As hard as he tried to keep his genuine interest disguised as jokes, he feared Varric was aware. Varric had certainly been careful to make his own lack of interest in humans crystal clear.

"It's better for a storyteller to stay out of the story he's telling," Varric said softly. "People swallow tall tales more easily when they don't stink of self-aggrandizement."

"Ah." He wasn't under the impression that had ever stopped Varric before.

The hand on his lower back twitched in some abortive gesture. "Besides, I can't compete with dragons."

Hawke bit his cheek. He'd rather have Varric in his bed than a dragon any day of the week.

"I think that depends on what you and I are up to in these stories, doesn't it?" It was no crime to hope for juicy details. He'd given up on the reality long ago, but he'd be happy to wallow in someone else's fantasies about him and Varric.

"All I know is that the rumor exists. No juicy details have been brought to my attention, which means either there are none, or that they're impressively outrageous raunchy." At Hawke's look, he added, "I promise I didn't start this rumor."

Hawke hadn't expected he had. That would have been something, though, to have the friend he fantasized about authoring fantasies—and not absurd ones involving dragons—about him. "Well, right now rumors that we're sleeping together are difficult to deny."

"True." Varric seemed less amused by this than Hawke was. "I should have given you more breathing room since you got back. I'm creating problems for you."

"What problems?" Hawke wanted the laughter back in Varric's eyes. "If your fans can't decide whether they should introduce me to their dwarven friends or their dragons, that will cut down on the number of would-be suitors I have to turn away."

Varric was giving him a funny look. "Have people been tripping over themselves to propose marriage to you?"

"Tripping me, more like. It's entirely your fault. That Blighted best-seller of yours got it into people's heads that I was an attractive marriage prospect."

"You can't pin this one on me. You are an attractive marriage prospect. You're rich. You're funny. You're brave. You're drop dead gorgeous, for a human. Ancestors, you even spent a week as viscount of Kirkwall!"

Hawke scowled. "'For a human'?! I'll have you know I have dwarven admirers too."

"Stating the obvious, Hawke." He patted Hawke on the shoulder with his trapped hand.

Hawke rolled his eyes. "You know what I mean. Admirers who don't qualify their admiration with 'for a human'. Not everyone's as narrow-minded as you. In Adamant alone, I can think of two dwarves I could be making time with if I kicked you out of bed."

Varric made a disgusted sound. "If I were you, I wouldn't be throwing any stones. You talk a good game about open-mindedness, but I don't see you ever following through on that threat."

"That's because I'd be an idiot to kick you out of bed."

Varric's breath caught. Hawke's face burned. _Shit._ That was supposed to be a witty retort, not a bald-faced confession of the feelings he'd kept private for nearly a decade.

Varric cleared his throat, then cleared it again. "I mentioned last night there were some things I hadn't told you."

Hawke blinked at the sudden swerve. Somehow the change in topic didn't make him any less nervous.

"Hawke..." Varric took another deep breath. "I admire you without any qualifications. I adore you. When I thought you'd died, it hit me that I couldn't keep pretending I didn't. Not to myself, or anyone else."

Hawke's head spun. He couldn't seem to catch his breath. "But you did," he heard himself say.

"When you came back, I wanted things to be normal. I've been pretending they are. That I don't want you. That your dreams don't worry me. That I can stand to be apart from you. And now I'm pretending that I'm any good at dealing with things like this."

Hawke's head stopped spinning, and when it stopped, it seemed like the whole world was oriented in a new and wonderful direction. He was grinning like a fool.

"Leave this one to me, then, Varric." His right hand trailed lower down the bare skin of Varric's belly. "If I'm good enough to seduce a high dragon, I'm certain I can handle one handsome dwarf."

Varric leaned in to kiss him, his eyes crinkling with laughter.


End file.
